Some Pigs are More Equal than Others

A couple of months ago, one of my friends and I were having a Tiny Tornado Appreciation Moment. My friend said, "She's just so special. I mean, all kids are special, right, I just mean...she's really special. Not that all kids aren't special. It's just that..."

I laughed and said, "It's just that some pigs are more equal than others."

I knew what she was struggling to say. It can be hard to say, "this kid is exceptional" without sounding like you're denigrating all the other kids in some way. But I have a couple of thoughts about this kind of thing.

One is that the Tiny Tornado is certainly a forceful and compelling little person. She draws attention wherever she goes. Here's one example: I took 5 kids, ages 11 to 4, to a First Robotics competition. At some point, we decided to leave the bleachers and go do something--eat, or use the bathroom, or whatever. We had to excuse ourselves past a group of 3 sitting by the aisle. The quite attractive 11-year-old said, "Excuse me," and they slid their knees sideways and smiled slightly as he went past. The sturdy and handsome 9-year-old said, "Excuse me," and they nodded at him. The 8-year-old flashed his brilliant smile and said, "Excuse me," and they said, "no problem." The totally adorable and highly verbal 6-year-old said, "Thank you for letting us through," and they said, "You're welcome." The Tiny Tornado stepped forward to take her turn sidling by, and they said, "Oh, my God! He is soooo cute! Hi, sweetheart!" And then to me, as I passed, "What a doll! What a cutie!"

But, the thing is, it's not entirely that the Tiny Tornado is more amazing than those other four kids. It's that somehow she wears her amazingness on the outside, where people seem to see it even if she's not actually doing anything more noteworthy than walking by. It's not just that she's a handsome little person, though she is. It's something less definiable, something charismatic that draws the eye.

And this would make her a very special child except that I know several kids who have this quality as well. One in particular that I, the mother of a charismatic kid, cannot take my eyes off whenever I'm around. It's a good thing I only see this particular child twice a year or so, or I'd be walking into walls and falling over chairs much more often than would be good for me.

It's also, I think, worth noting that public amazingness isn't necessarily better than the more private kind. The Tiny Tornado is always doing and saying things that get her attention; she attracts an audience wherever she goes. Her older brother, the Lego Savant, is especially talented at building things in three dimensions. He can do anything with Lego, hence his name. He made a tiny working crossbow the other day, for instance, and sometimes you can't tell whether something he built is a Lego Savant original or a Lego set, made by following the directions. But he's good with clay, folded paper, and coasters and extra forks in restaurants. Set him down somewhere with nothing particular to do, and something he can pick up and start fiddling with in front of him, and in short order he will have made something of it. He's a relatively introverted kid and doesn't much like being the center of attention, but I can take pictures of the stuff he makes and if I show them around, people say, "Wow. He's really talented."

Word Boy has a special gift for language. He pays close attention to the nuances of words, and since he was very young (2? 3?) has asked questions about why a writer chose this word over that one, or whether a speaker didn't really mean something else. One day last year, at breakfast in a restaurant, I said, "I hope our breakfast comes fast," and he said, "Shouldn't you say you hope breakfast comes soon?" He does this kind of thing twenty times a day. David and I are are always giving each other "did you hear that?" glances over his head. But you're not going to notice that unless you spend a lot of time with him. You're not going to pick up on it just watching him sneak past your knees in the bleachers.

There is a kind of feedback mechanism that happens with the Tiny Tornado, where people are very vocal about how charmed they are, and then she ramps up the charisma to get that attention, which she loves, and then they find her even cuter. Often she does things in public that I wish she wouldn't do--she'll argue back to me, or take matters into her own hands when I've said No about the candy on the shelf, or say something that is both precocious and bratty, as if her lines were written by our sitcom's writing staff--and nearby people will laugh and make goo-goo eyes at her. It makes extinguishing these behaviors extra-challenging. Extra-extra-challenging, since I also find her charming even when she's mischievous, and since she is not exactly easy to extinguish. If behavior were a fire, hers would be one of those chemicals that burns even in the complete absence of oxygen.

What was my point? Oh, that this kind of flashy, lay-it-all-out-there "specialness" is certainly one kind of specialness. But it isn't the only kind, or even necessarily the best kind, and I think it carries its own set of...dangers is too strong a word. But it is not without its drawbacks.